We should have responded with nukes that day, the following couple of days, where we had a window - but didn’t.
We should have.
Can you imagine the USA if we had? We’d have allies galore because no one wants to be left out of that kind of protection. Damn sure Barack Obama wouldn’t have ever been elected president. And bin laden would have lost many years of sex with young women and porn. Ha.
Hard to say. People elect conservatives when they sense that the country is in trouble. When times are good, they go with libertines, or liberals, who will let folks eat cake for breakfast. Failing cake for breakfast, liberals (in Congress) will allow rating agencies to stamp an AAA on ZZZ worthy mortgage backed securities.
No, we’d have probably ended up with Ubangi. What he offered was a ‘get out of racist jail free’ card to Americans who had had a couple of generations of white guilt foisted on them. Nothing more.
The only reason why we aren’t going to have a woman president any time soon is because Palin rose to counter Hillary. That, and I think the US is a little sick of nepotism, and we did the Bill Clinton/Bush Dynasty thing a little too long.
Bush/Clinton marked the bad old days after Reagan. Reagan should never have granted amnesty, but beyond that he was a landmark President.
If not Ubangi, we’d have ended up with another buffoon. People love incompetent Presidents they can roll.